How to Use a Vegetable Knife

Video Transcript

"LAURA BANFORD: You could do different jobs with a variety of knives. Some part of it is personal preference. I'm going to slice and seed this pepper using this nice, pointy, serrated vegetable knife. We need to cut off the top and the bottom. And you could use these maybe for a garnish or something, but we don't need them today. What I'm going to do is make a slice in the side of the pepper, let's make two slices, and open it up. This is a real seedy one. Let's get rid of that. And I'm going to use this nice, sharp, pointy knife to slice out the ribs. Now, from there, you can slice your pepper into strips or dice it, whichever you want. But first, you have to get rid of the top and the bottom, as I did, and the seeds and the ribs. Now, I'll just go ahead and do some matchstick slices. Yeah, I'm curling my fingers in to keep them away from the blade. You never want to get [SOUNDS LIKE] cavaliered about the ends of your fingers. Some very famous chefs have lost the ends of their, some of their fingers but that's far from ideal, I would think. I like to slice the pepper from the inside. It's easier than slicing it from the outside because the skin is resistant. By the time your blade comes through, there is more force at the end of your slice than at the beginning of your slice and that slices the skin better. When we come back, we're going to peel an apple with a paring knife."